New York, NY (February 10, 2022)—Pineapple Street Studios, an Audacy company, today announced Love Thy Neighbor, a five-part narrative series about the Crown Heights riot in Brooklyn. On the original series, Emmy-award winning journalist Collier Meyerson explores the lasting impact those four days of violence had on Crown Heights residents and the future of New York City. Meyerson has a deep connection to this story as a Black, Jewish New Yorker who lived in Crown Heights for eight years.

On August 19, 1991, violence broke out between the Black and the Lubavitch Hasidic community in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. A deadly car accident of a young Caribbean boy set off four days of turmoil that ended with the killing of an Orthodox man and hundreds of arrests.  Reverend Al Sharpton led protests through the streets. Rudolph Giuliani would ride the controversy and defeat New York’s first Black mayor, David Dinkins. Outside the neighborhood, facts quickly gave way to a more easily digestible narrative. But the people in Crown Heights have had to live with what actually went down for the next 30 years.

Through deeply personal, new and archival interviews with residents, scholars, and activists, Love Thy Neighbor will show how those four days in 1991 were a flashpoint that shaped a dark new era of politics, policing, anti-semitism and anti-Black racism in New York City. 

Guests on Love Thy Neighbor include Crown Heights residents, members of the Lubavitch and Black communities, journalists and activists, including: Tyesha Maddox, Assistant Professor of African American Studies at Fordham University; Rabbi Simon Jacobson, born and raised Crown Heights resident; Peter Noel, a Caribbean journalist who documented the unrest for the Village Voice; lifelong Jamaican-American Crown Heights resident Judith Lovell; and Andrew Kirtzman, journalist and author of “Rudy Giuliani: Emperor of the City.”

Love Thy Neighbor will launch on February 15, 2022 with all five episodes available to binge

exclusively on Audacy.  Episode One of Love Thy Neighbor will launch everywhere podcasts are available; new episodes will be available weekly on Tuesdays through March 15. Listen to the trailer and follow the show here.

“There’s a little known riot that happened 30 years ago on the streets of Brooklyn, but what came to be known as the Crown Heights Riot impacted politics and policing in this city forever,” said Collier Meyerson. “Telling this story through a new lens can teach us a lot about how we got to where we are, not just as a city, but as a nation, and I’m glad to do so with Pineapple Street Studios.”

“Collier’s thoughtfully reported and at times personal approach to exploring the Crown Heights riot offers a 360 degree perspective of an event that shaped New York history,” said Jenna Weiss-Berman and Max Linsky, co-founders, Pineapple Street Studios. “Her ability to break down the intense dynamics of the four days that changed New York will take listeners back thirty years and shine a light on similar forces still at work today.”

Collier Meyerson is a contributor at Wired Magazine and New York magazine and a Knobler Fellow at Type Media Center.  She received an Emmy for her work on MSNBC’s “All In with Chris Hayes” and has won two awards from the National Association of Black Journalists for her writing. 

Love Thy Neighbor is written by Meyerson and Noah Remnick, and edited by Joel Lovell. Produced by Jess Jupiter. Justine Daum serves as managing producer, with production assistance and research by Yinka Rickford-Anguin. Henry Molofsky serves as Senior Producer. Fact checking by Natsumi Ajisaka and Charles Richter. Original music by Will Johnson. Engineered by Davy Sumner and Jason Richards. Executive producers at Pineapple Street Studios are Jenna Weiss-Berman and Max Linsky.

Download the cover art for Love Thy Neighbor here.

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